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amorousodiousThis was my first experience traveling by myself in España, so I made sure that I was prepared. I had fruit and two bocadillos with me thanks to Lucía, so I wouldn’t have to worry about food for the day. I also already had a map of Barcelona, and I knew where I was coming into the bus station and also where the hostel was. I took a bus when I went to Madrid as well, so that was familiar too. Oddly the bus was extremely empty, so I had 2 seats to myself, as did everyone else on the bus. It was an uneventful 4 hour long trip, but it got me to Barcelona in the end. Once I was there I had a long walk over to the hostel, which took me an hour and a half but the weather was beautiful and sunny and about 20 degrees, so it was pretty pleasant.
I met up with Laura, Rachel, Melinda and Tom as they were leaving to find someplace to eat lunch, so we all headed together to this place that served tapas. I just ate my bocadillo while we were there, but Laura had some asparagus that looked delicious, and Tom was disappointed in his chorizo, which was not at all spicy. We went shopping for a while afterward, there was one shop that we went to that had really nice clothes, but I had to remind myself that I had limited luggage space, so buying a new outfit wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
After shopping we went back to the hostel to check me in and take some pictures of the beach before we went to Parque Güell. We met a big group of Catalonians on the beach who were drunk and singing, and wanted to take pictures with us. It was kind of fun, though they did ask the typical first question that I’ve gotten every time I’ve said “I’m from the US” which is “Hillary or Obama?” They are OBSESSED with Hillary and Obama here. Never mind that their elections here in Spain are coming up in a few days, they want to know who I support from the US. It’s interesting also that they never ask about McCain. A few people that I’ve mentioned it to haven’t even realized that McCain exists as a candidate since their news here focuses so much on the fight between Hillary and Obama.
That's the Catalonians' bottle of liquor that Rachel is holding by the way, they handed it to her because they wanted us to stay and drink with them.
That’s enough about politics. We left the drunken Catalonians on the beach singing into their megaphone and stopped at the next available ice cream place. They had banana gelato that actually tasted like bananas, and dark chocolate ice cream. Since I couldn’t decide between the two, I got them both in a cone, which made for a great combination. It took us a long time to get to Parque Güell, and then once we were there to find our way through the park to where the buildings were, so by the time we found the actual artwork it was already dark and we couldn’t see much color. Regardless we all took pictures with the lizard, and other random things that were there. We hung out awhile to watch a futbol (soccer) game in a lot nearby, and then headed out to find the nearest metro station.
We went back to the hostel and got ready to go out for the night. The big debate was whether warmth or cute shirts were more important. I think overall cute shirts/shoes won the debate. It wasn’t extremely cold anyway, so I think we made the best choice. We started by going out to dinner at a place where we all ordered pizza (yeah, we ate pizza in Spain, very traditional) and then took forever trying to find this dance place. There was a band there playing rock-type music and I really enjoyed it even though there were a few viejos verdes there. Laura and Rachel preferred to dance to other music though so we left and went to a different club where there was supposed to be hip-hop and techno. It was a really nice place, pretty good music and we stayed until about 3 am. We took taxis back to the hostel and Laura and Rachel went right to bed since we had about an hour to sleep before we had to leave to go to the airport and catch our flight to Belgium. I decided that I would be more tired if I went to bed so I stayed up and had political and religious debates with the people working at the front desk.
I think I’m starting to see a pattern in my conversations with Spaniards. I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but I run into people with the most interesting views, like a native from Morocco who’s a nationalist Catalonian/Muslim and a native Catalonian who is neither Catholic nor nationalist. They were both interesting people to talk to, but not exactly the most common thing to run into. If you’re interested, one of them was an artist of sorts who puts together sound bytes that you can download on the internet. Here is a link LINK GOES HERE to one of the “creation sessions” where they record the sounds. They had the audience do all sorts of different noises, including fight with each other, make animal noises, have all of their cell phones go off at the same time etc.
Well, at 4am we got up, took the metro and then a bus for an hour and a half to the airport, and caught our plane to Belgium. Laura let me share her ipod, so I got to sleep listening to some good music on the bus and the plane. It was really interesting flying with Ryan Air, it’s a low-cost carrier that does inter-continental flights in Europe but honestly it really sucked as far as flying goes. I wasn’t impressed with the fact that we had to walk from the terminal to the plane outside, or that the plane was obviously filthy and in bad shape. The planes themselves I’ve been told are fairly new, but the inside looked dreadful. I don’t think that I’ll be buying tickets from them again because cheap as they are I don’t think it’s worth it to fly into airports like Girona outside of Barcelona or Charleroix outside of Brussels and then have to take a bus or drive for just about as long as you just spent on the plane. Regardless, we did arrive in Belgium at about 10,30 and that’s where the next adventure begins.
I met up with Laura, Rachel, Melinda and Tom as they were leaving to find someplace to eat lunch, so we all headed together to this place that served tapas. I just ate my bocadillo while we were there, but Laura had some asparagus that looked delicious, and Tom was disappointed in his chorizo, which was not at all spicy. We went shopping for a while afterward, there was one shop that we went to that had really nice clothes, but I had to remind myself that I had limited luggage space, so buying a new outfit wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
After shopping we went back to the hostel to check me in and take some pictures of the beach before we went to Parque Güell. We met a big group of Catalonians on the beach who were drunk and singing, and wanted to take pictures with us. It was kind of fun, though they did ask the typical first question that I’ve gotten every time I’ve said “I’m from the US” which is “Hillary or Obama?” They are OBSESSED with Hillary and Obama here. Never mind that their elections here in Spain are coming up in a few days, they want to know who I support from the US. It’s interesting also that they never ask about McCain. A few people that I’ve mentioned it to haven’t even realized that McCain exists as a candidate since their news here focuses so much on the fight between Hillary and Obama.
That's the Catalonians' bottle of liquor that Rachel is holding by the way, they handed it to her because they wanted us to stay and drink with them.
That’s enough about politics. We left the drunken Catalonians on the beach singing into their megaphone and stopped at the next available ice cream place. They had banana gelato that actually tasted like bananas, and dark chocolate ice cream. Since I couldn’t decide between the two, I got them both in a cone, which made for a great combination. It took us a long time to get to Parque Güell, and then once we were there to find our way through the park to where the buildings were, so by the time we found the actual artwork it was already dark and we couldn’t see much color. Regardless we all took pictures with the lizard, and other random things that were there. We hung out awhile to watch a futbol (soccer) game in a lot nearby, and then headed out to find the nearest metro station.
We went back to the hostel and got ready to go out for the night. The big debate was whether warmth or cute shirts were more important. I think overall cute shirts/shoes won the debate. It wasn’t extremely cold anyway, so I think we made the best choice. We started by going out to dinner at a place where we all ordered pizza (yeah, we ate pizza in Spain, very traditional) and then took forever trying to find this dance place. There was a band there playing rock-type music and I really enjoyed it even though there were a few viejos verdes there. Laura and Rachel preferred to dance to other music though so we left and went to a different club where there was supposed to be hip-hop and techno. It was a really nice place, pretty good music and we stayed until about 3 am. We took taxis back to the hostel and Laura and Rachel went right to bed since we had about an hour to sleep before we had to leave to go to the airport and catch our flight to Belgium. I decided that I would be more tired if I went to bed so I stayed up and had political and religious debates with the people working at the front desk.
I think I’m starting to see a pattern in my conversations with Spaniards. I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but I run into people with the most interesting views, like a native from Morocco who’s a nationalist Catalonian/Muslim and a native Catalonian who is neither Catholic nor nationalist. They were both interesting people to talk to, but not exactly the most common thing to run into. If you’re interested, one of them was an artist of sorts who puts together sound bytes that you can download on the internet. Here is a link LINK GOES HERE to one of the “creation sessions” where they record the sounds. They had the audience do all sorts of different noises, including fight with each other, make animal noises, have all of their cell phones go off at the same time etc.
Well, at 4am we got up, took the metro and then a bus for an hour and a half to the airport, and caught our plane to Belgium. Laura let me share her ipod, so I got to sleep listening to some good music on the bus and the plane. It was really interesting flying with Ryan Air, it’s a low-cost carrier that does inter-continental flights in Europe but honestly it really sucked as far as flying goes. I wasn’t impressed with the fact that we had to walk from the terminal to the plane outside, or that the plane was obviously filthy and in bad shape. The planes themselves I’ve been told are fairly new, but the inside looked dreadful. I don’t think that I’ll be buying tickets from them again because cheap as they are I don’t think it’s worth it to fly into airports like Girona outside of Barcelona or Charleroix outside of Brussels and then have to take a bus or drive for just about as long as you just spent on the plane. Regardless, we did arrive in Belgium at about 10,30 and that’s where the next adventure begins.
